Diana & Dodi： The Final Summer of Secrets ｜ Full Documentary

There's fresh controversy surrounding Princess Diana this lunchtime after newspaper reports linking her with Dodi Fayed, the son of the Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed. She's said to have joined the 40-year-old millionaire and a group of friends for a Mediterranean cruise last weekend. Once again, her judgments under scrutiny. A day before she leaves for a controversial trip to Bosnia to campaign against landmines. Caroline Kerr reports. When are you coming home? I'm coming home on Sunday, Paul. I'm just bored. I'm on this boat. It's freezing cold downstairs. It's boiling hot on deck. I'm sending these pictures out and nobody's coming back to me. The only way I can get home is via Paris because Dodi has to go to Paris to do some business for his father. How is he with you? Oh, he's very spoiling. He's given me a necklace, some earrings. He's given me a watch. I said, you know what's coming next, don't you? He's going to give you a ring. I didn't question Dodi about it, but he did come to my office, which was two doors away from his father's office in Harrods. And he did express to me the depth of his love for the princess. He said to me, Michael, there'll never, ever be another woman for me. Never. There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time. She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. Conspiracy theory wiped Fiat Uno. The Mercedes approached this town. The mouth of Muhammad Al-Fayed himself. The pain in her heart. In February 1981, the waiting was over. Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Charles and Lady Diana were engaged. The ring was a sapphire surrounded by diamonds. The couple looked happy and relaxed, delighted, like everyone else, that a wedding would take place. I personally think that Diana fell in love with Prince Charles. It's obvious to me that she was a young, naive girl, and she fell in love with the prince. Now, if you watch that piece of footage when Prince Charles is asked, are you in love, sir? Princess Diana's beaming. And I suppose in love. Of course. Whatever in love means. Well, it obviously means two very happy people. From us, congratulations. Thank you very much. And she looks at him as if to say, what are you talking about? Don't you know what love is? That was the problem from the beginning. Charles didn't really know what love was. I, Diana Francis, take thee, Charles Philip Arthur George, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, according to God's holy law, and thereto I give thee my cloak. I think after Harry was born, the relationship seriously broke down. It just hadn't worked out like both of them expected. And even before the wedding, Diana had serious doubts, and so did Charles. Charles's friends, his close, close friends, warned him, this is not going to work, Charles. This is, she's too young, she's too naive, and you know, you're an imaginary prince. She doesn't know you at all. You must remember that the princess lived within the British royal family for 15 years. She knew exactly what went on within it. She knew how things were done. She was at times extraordinarily unhappy, and her husband did nothing. She felt very wretched much of the time. But at the same time, she was a mother, and she had to maintain a brave face for her children. She didn't want them too affected by her evident distress at finding herself in a loveless marriage with a husband who was carrying on an affair, and not even bothering to hide it from her. Diana confronted Camilla about her adulterous affair with Charles in 1989, while they were both attending a birthday celebration for Camilla's sister, Annabelle Did you try to be faithful and honourable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage? Yes, absolutely. And you were? Yes, until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried. I think Diana was terrified. It was a big party on probably on three or four floors, and she looked around, where's Charles? Where's Charles? And then she realised that he must be downstairs on the lower level in the sort of basement area. And she went down there, and there they were. She just confronted Camilla and said, you know, I'm not stupid. I know what's going on. Diana was shaking with fear and rage. On the way back in the car, she was just in And her protection officer, Ken Wharfe, was with her, and so he confirms all this, that she just sobbed all the way home, and I don't think Charles said a word. But I think that was the turning point, really, of the relationship, because, you know, soon thereafter, I think Diana had then given up any hope of a reconciliation. But I suppose, you know, Diana wasn't stupid, and she thought, well, look, you know, I'll go and see what this is like, because they would be people that she was completely unassociated with. These weren't her friends. These were friends of Camilla's. So, you know, if you try and put yourself in that position, would you go to a party when you didn't like any of them? So there had to be a raison d'etre here, I guess, and I think Diana wanted to see for herself. She spoke candidly about her divorce and hardships on television, especially her battles with bulimia and depression, something the royals had never done before. You're inflicted upon yourself because your self-esteem is too low, and you don't think you're worthy or valuable. You fill your stomach up four or five times a day, some do it more, and it gives you a feeling of comfort. It's like having a pair of arms around you, but it's temporary. Then you're disgusted at the bloatiness of your stomach, and then you bring it all up again. The only secret Diana ever kept from me was the Martin Bashir interview for Panorama. I was sent home on a Sunday afternoon. Strange, I thought. Why would she be sending me home? Go and spend some time with your family. I'm doing nothing this afternoon. Don't worry about me. The next morning I came to work, I noticed all the furniture had been moved. Why have you moved the furniture? It's not in the same place. I had a dance class. I had to move the furniture out of the way just so that we could exercise. Strange, very strange. She avoided me for the next two days, never spoke to me, and then she told me that she made a recording with Martin Bashir for Panorama. What have you said? Well, I just put the record straight, she said. I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it's the strength that causes the confusion and the fear. Why is she strong? Where does she get it from? Where is she taking it? Where is she going to use it? Something like 31 million people stopped in their tracks on that Monday night and couldn't believe what they were seeing. The Princess of Wales bearing her heart on national television. We couldn't take our eyes away from it. We couldn't believe what we were hearing. Do you think Mrs Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. Although this kind of criticism was unheard of, the public embraced it as a breath of fresh air. There was much speculation that Princess Diana had been murdered when she passed away on August 31st 1997 in a somewhat unusual manner. Conspiracy theorists said she had been permanently silenced. In the summer of 92, a recording of Diana speaking to one of her friends, who actually was her lover, James Gilby, appeared in one of the newspapers. The transcript of this recording was unbelievable. It was an extraordinary, extraordinary, explosive moment and really there was very little that the Queen could do after that. The Queen realised that this couldn't go on because it was actually, it was taking up all the news and there were important things happening. The monarchy has no power, they only have influence and at this moment it was their shenanigans that were making the news, which is completely wrong and she was actually, she was very concerned about the institution of the monarchy with all this scandal going on. She thought there's only one thing to do and the Queen is head of the church and the last thing she wants is a divorce and so she must have thought about it very, very carefully and decided that that was the only way forward. So she basically ordered them to divorce. After her divorce, Diana retained the double apartment on the north side of Kensington Palace that she had shared with Charles. She also moved her offices to Kensington Palace but was permitted to use the state apartments at St James's Palace. Diana was also offered security by the Metropolitan Police's Royalty Protection Group, which she benefited from while travelling with her sons. However, she refused it in the final years of her life to distance herself from the royal family. Yes, so in this discussion, you know, I said, look, there's only one piece of advice that I can give and that's, look, whilst our security and whilst having us around you has sometimes been invasive and I accept that, we've allowed you some privacy and, you know, we've had fun at the same time and, you know, that's how it is. So I don't know what you're going to do but, look, whatever you do, whether you, you know, you work anywhere in the world or another country, you will always be Diana. And sadly, she didn't listen and I think that that decision on her part ultimately led to her tragic death in Paris in 1997. And there's only one person that, in my view, that could have changed those course of events. You know, had Her Majesty the Queen insisted that Diana retain that security, then I'm convinced that her death would never have happened. Diana had gone to see a friend's spouse who was being treated for surgery problems at the Royal Brompton Hospital in September 1995. When she was there, she met Hasnut Khan, a cardiac surgeon, and immediately fell in love with him. Towards the end of her life, of course, she found her soul mate. Her soul mate was Hasnut Khan. Hasnut Khan had been the princess's companion for over two years. Nobody knew about Hasnut Khan. That was not played out on the world stage. I was the one that went out with my car, brought people back to Kensington Palace in the back seat of my car underneath a blanket, just to give the princess some love. All she was ever looking for was to be loved. She used to say to me, all I ever want, Paul, is to want a man to put their arms around me and say, I love you. That's not too much to ask, is it? And that's what she was searching for. Diana, when she came to Pakistan, this was a country that she had fond memories of, wasn't it? Yes, I think she enjoyed her time here. She really liked the days she spent here, I think. And in fact, Diana introduced William and Harry to Hasnut Khan, because in the princess's eyes, Hasnut was the man she was going to marry. So better the boys get used to him. But he was very, very worried that the press would get hold of it, and he couldn't deal with it. Diana and Dodi met long before 1997. They met at various events, film premieres, at the polo, at the horse show, the sort of places that people of their kind would meet at. When they actually fell in love in the summer of 1997, they were already friends. And then, of course, they were together in the south of France, and a relationship which was already established became a deeper and closer relationship. And when they came back to London, they'd already made arrangements to get in touch with each other. They met, and they started seeing each other, and it all went on from there. Mohammed Al-Fayed attempted to preserve a lasting impression of his version of the relationship between his late son and Diana. In the aftermath of the crash, Mohammed created a shrine for the couple in the basement of Howard's department store. The engagement ring Dodi supposedly gave Diana the day before their deaths was displayed in an acrylic pyramid in front of the pictures. Mohammed has insisted that the British Secret Service killed Dodi and Diana. Dodi was Muslim and going to wed the mother of a future king of England, the implication being that Mohammed was confident that Diana was carrying his son's child at the time of her death. Diana's closest confidants in her last years did not need an inquest to know the absurdity of Al-Fayed's claims. She was neither pregnant nor planning to marry Al-Fayed. She was in fact still madly in love with Hasnat. Although she was still adored and a lucrative subject for editors, Diana had overstayed her welcome in the British media. She could do no wrong when she was married to Charles, and afterwards when he was held responsible for the dissolution of the marriage. In the years following, Diana was accused of twisting the story too much in her favor and lying on several counts. Press scrutiny and ridicule were a small price to divert attention away from her romance with Hasnat. However, his schedule began to frustrate Diana, who would call multiple times when Khan was in surgery, leaving messages under false names such as Dr Armani. Her late night visits made hospital administrators worry about press intrusion. Hasnat realized he could not facilitate such relations. He said that the hospital had started getting a bit upset by the disruption caused by Diana's visits. It was becoming a security issue. Diana had never experienced a normal life. Before her engagement to Charles, she was a member of one of England's most fabled aristocratic families. Well, Princess Diana was the daughter of an Earl. Her father was Lord Spencer, and he was later Viscount Althorpe. They had a house on the Sandringham estate, and then when Diana's grandfather died, they moved to the family stately home, Althorpe. And the Spencer family were quite an ancient aristocratic family, and Diana was very proud of her heritage. I mean, they were actually probably grander than the royal family. Well, Diana Spencer, as she was, is probably one of the most insecure people I'd ever met. She was also a real mixture of being completely naive and yet worldly wise. She was always different, so she was always fascinating. Diana discussed marriage with Hasnat. She told him she wanted to have a daughter with him. She went as far as to ask her butler, Paul, to find someone who could discreetly marry them. When Hasnat found out, he said, do you honestly think you can just bring a priest here and get married? He thought the idea was ridiculous, and this was his breaking point. I knew Dodie, and he was probably one of the most charming people you could ever meet, and was also rather cool. American accent, beautifully dressed, and he treated Diana like the princess she was. Nobody else had treated her like that. I mean, with Hasnat Khan, she had to sort of hide him at the back of her car, and they had to, you know, they mostly ate in, or if they went out, she was in disguise. But with Dodie, she could show herself off. I think she liked him very much. I don't know if she was in love with him, but she was in love with the idea of him. I think Diana wanted to get married again, and she wanted to have another child. Again, I think getting married again probably was a bit of a fantasy. Certainly, getting married to the doctor that she was in love with was a fantasy, because it would never have worked out. It couldn't have worked for him. But she did want to get married again, very much so. In a way, I think she wanted to find someone that could work with her, in a way that it was what she'd hoped for when she married Prince Charles. On July 10, 1997, the night before she went to Saint-Tropez, Hasnat stayed with her at Kensington Palace. When Diana went to Saint-Tropez with Mr. Al-Fayed, everything was fine between us. Hasnat told police, investigating her death. After a few days, I felt something was wrong. Her mobile kept going onto answer phone. When she returned home, Diana met Hasnat in Battersea Park. He recalled how she was not her usual self. He told her he thought she had met someone else, and it must be someone with a connection to Al-Fayed. She denied there was anyone else. They arranged to meet the following day at Kensington Palace. It was during this meeting that Diana told Hasnat it was over. He recalls saying to her, meaning her reputation was dead. He said this because he was sure Thatch was involved with Mohammed Al-Fayed's group, and that was how he felt about anyone involved with them. Diana and her companion Rosa Moncton took a cruise when they returned from Bosnia. Between August 15 and August 20, they travelled around the Greek islands on Moncton's yacht for Since it was such a small boat and nobody knew the Princess of Wales was on board, Rosa claims that the media did not follow them while they were on their trip. During the trip, Diana told her friend that the relationship with Hasnat was over. Dodi was going to give her a ring, but she said it was going firmly on her right hand. Diana's friend said that the relationship had broken down because of Diana's frustration with Hasnat. He wouldn't agree to marry her or even take the relationship public. Dodi was designed to make him jealous. On 20 August, Diana arrives in the French Riviera. It is here where the photographs that were shown across the world were taken. The clear message? Diana was in love, and this time for real. She spent nine days with Dodi on his father's yacht. At 11.30, the couple land in Paris. From his window, Fired immediately spotted the paparazzi. As soon as the doors opened, cameras began clicking. The number of photographers and their aggressiveness would increase as the day progressed. They arrived at the Ritz Hotel, and shortly after, Dodi ventured to Repossi Jewelers, where he picked out two rings that would be delivered to the Imperial Suite. They exited the hotel around 7pm and were driven to the Fired residence near the Arc de Triomphe. Photographers were waiting at the building's front door when they arrived. Fired fumed. There was an ugly shoving match. As soon as he was inside, Fired announced his plan to propose to his butler. The ring was placed on the nightstand in his bedroom. He ensured they had several bottles of Dom Perignon on ice for the big event. Photographers swarmed into Chez Benoit, the first restaurant they visited that evening. Using the hotel's front entrance, they headed to its Le Spadon restaurant at 9.50pm. Trevor Rees-Jones, Diana's bodyguard and Fired attempt to evade photographers by escaping the hotel through the rear entrance, and returning to Fired's apartment close to the Arc de Triomphe. Henri Paul, a Ritz security employee, drives them in a black Mercedes S280. Paul had already consumed a scotch and a beer by this time. His blood alcohol level exceeded the legal limit in France by more than three times. During a September 1997 analysis of Paul's blood, hair and spinal cord, the antidepressant Prozac and the alcohol withdrawal medication Tiapradel were found. After leaving the Rue Combon and crossing the Place de la Concorde, they drove along Cour Larenne and Cour Albert. The embankment road along the right bank of the River Seine, into the Place de l'Alma underpass. At 12.23, Paul lost control of the vehicle. At the Pont de l'Alma tunnel entrance, the car struck the right-hand wall and swerved to the left of the two-lane carriageway, before colliding head-on with the 13th pillar that supported the roof. The vehicle was travelling at an estimated speed of 105kmh. This was over twice the tunnel's 50kmh limit. It then spun and hit the stone wall of the tunnel backwards, finally coming to a stop. Witnesses arriving shortly after the crash reported smoke. They also said that motorcycle photographers had sworn to the Mercedes sedan before it entered the tunnel. Despite attempts to save her life, Diana's injuries were too extensive, and resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, were unsuccessful. Her heart had been displaced to the right side of the chest, which tore the pulmonary vein and the pericardium. Diana died at the hospital at approximately 4am. A princess of Wales has been seriously injured in a car accident in Paris. We are getting one report from a news agency that the princess is suffering from concussion. French radio is saying that the accident happened in western Paris, when the car she was travelling in collided with another vehicle in a tunnel. The princess is reported to have been taken to hospital. There is no news of her condition, and as yet the report is unconfirmed. But one wonders if one is being told the whole truth at the moment. Stephen, I have to interrupt there, because within the last few moments, the Press Association in Britain, citing unnamed British sources, has reported that Diana, Princess of Wales, has died. This is not yet confirmed by any official source. Following external medical examinations by a French court-appointed medical expert, the bodies of the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al-Fayed were repatriated to England later that day. The Princess of Wales' body had been embalmed in Paris. Post-mortem examinations were carried out on the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al-Fayed at Hammersmith and Fulham Mortuary on Sunday, August 31, 1997. The cause of death for both was attributed to the catastrophic injuries sustained in the crash. Mohamed Al-Fayed has claimed that the Princess of Wales could have been saved if she had been taken immediately to the nearest hospital for emergency treatment. He contended that en route to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the ambulance passed a hospital with adequate facilities and could have rendered emergency treatment. The ambulance took almost two hours to arrive at the hospital, therefore her chances of survival were minimal. The first report said that she was not badly injured, that one of the chasing paparazzi, a man called Romain Rat, opened the car door. He actually put his hand on her neck to feel her pulse and spoke to her and said, help is coming, it's on its way. He wouldn't have been talking to her unless she had been compus mentis, as long as she'd been aware of what was going on. In this country, in America, scoop and shoot. You scoop up the patient from the scene of the crash and you take them as fast as you can to the best equipped nearby emergency room. In this case that did not happen. It took an amazing hour and 40 minutes to get to a hospital four miles away and on the way there they drove past two other hospitals which could quite easily have treated her. Now any accident specialist, trauma specialist, will say the best place for a patient to be is in the hospital because only there would they have been able to detect fully the extent of her internal injuries. Why that wasn't done? I mean even at the gates of the hospital they stopped for a number of minutes before taking her inside. None of this makes sense. Witnesses said that Henri Paul, the driver, had drunk a scotch and one beer but the findings from the blood test said he was three times over the legal limit. He was also on Prozac anti-aprodol. Was the crash his fault? When I first heard there'd been this appalling tragedy in Paris, I naturally assumed that it had been a terrible accident but subsequently everything that happened made me believe that it wasn't an accident and that it was a conspiracy. It's very hard to say that. I didn't want to believe it but circumstances, many many circumstances, have persuaded me to that conclusion. The London Evening Paper on Monday, which was published at about 10 o'clock in the morning, had a headline drunk as a skunk and claimed that the car was traveling at 120 miles an hour, 180 kilometers an hour, claimed that the speedometer was stuck at that speed, claimed that the driver was three times over the legal limit. At that stage, on that Monday, they hadn't even analyzed the blood samples allegedly taken from Henri Paul. It was established at the British inquest that the car was only going 60 miles an hour. Of course that's fast but it's not 120 miles now and from then on everything that happened led me to believe that it was, as the English jury eventually concluded, unlawful killing and everything I saw during the years, it took 10 years, 10 years before there was an inquest in this country, in Britain, and everything I saw and everything I heard pointed to a cover-up. And you only have to look at all the evidence. The fact that all the cameras on the route to the crash were switched off, unbelievable, truly unbelievable. The fact that the Fiat Uno, which allegedly collided with the Mercedes sedan, has never been found. The fact that the man who could have been driving it, a photographer called Anderson, he was found dead inside his car. Allegedly he'd committed suicide but he had two holes in his head, two shots. Well, when you're committing suicide you don't need the second shot, one is quite enough. The French investigation carried out a major search for the Fiat Uno but they couldn't locate the car and after this length of time it's very unlikely that we shall do so. The princess had written me a letter and in that letter she said the next few months are the most difficult in my life. I fear that my husband is planning an accident in my car dash head injuries in order that he can remarry. Now when you read those words, a prophecy the princess made 10 months before she died that came true, it's rather eerie. So I have no idea whether people were listening, people were following, people were watching. All I can believe is that no one would sign an order to murder the mother of the future king of England. It would have been most unwelcome to the British royal family and the British establishment for Diana, the mother of the future king, to have married a Muslim. Had they had two beautiful children the newspapers would have been writing about Diana and Dodi and their children. You would have had in effect in Britain an alternative royal family. Now that could not have been allowed, it would not have been allowed because it would have taken the focus away from the House of Windsor. They didn't know, one, whether she was pregnant, two, whether they were coming back to London on the Monday to announce an engagement, then it would have been too late. Diana rang one journalist who she trusted, Richard Kaye, to say that she wanted to tell him something important. Well we don't know what that was. It's very convenient for a lot of people that Diana, Princess of Wales, is no longer here. Had she lived she would have been playing a major part in the bringing up of her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. When of course she was killed there was no question of that. The princes were brought up within the royal family, there was no dispute about it, there couldn't be, although in his eulogy at Westminster Abbey her brother Charles Spencer, Earl Spencer, made a very brilliant speech in which he referred, and not obliquely, quite openly to that problem. She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair and beyond that on behalf of your mother and sisters I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you are steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and but can sing openly as you planned. Did you know that the romance of the princess and Dodi Al-Fayed was 30 days from beginning to end? I spoke to her regularly when she was away. Have you seen Hasnet? I said yes, I went for a drink with him last night. What does he think about me being here in the south of France with Dodi Al-Fayed? Well he's not too pleased. Has he seen the pictures in the papers? Yes he has, because you know his routine, you know every morning he goes to the corner shop and sees the you know that and I know that's what you're doing. You're manipulating the world's media by having these pictures taken to show Hasnet who you're with. That's what Diana was saying to Hasnet Khan through those pictures in the world's media and of course Hasnet was bothered and I didn't find out until recently that he called her the day before she died on her mobile phone. He called her to try and patch up their relationship. Had she returned to London I truly believe the romance between Hasnet Khan and the princess would have been rekindled. It was too strong, it was too deep, they were true soul mates.